


Delta

by sleepyMoritz (Catherss)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Foggy Nelson, Bisexual Matt Murdock, Christmas, College, Drinking, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, New Years, Non-Explicit Sex, Polyamory, Relationship Negotiation, Relationship Problems, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-25 02:29:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherss/pseuds/sleepyMoritz
Summary: It started with a threesome, because no one ever really tells you how to go about sharing your boyfriend with his roommate.





	Delta

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keepitdreamin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepitdreamin/gifts).



> Written for the Daredevil 2018 Secret Santa exchange for Keepitdreamin, who prompted:
> 
> 1) "Matt and Foggy's first (or second or third) Christmas together in college/law school. What happens when they go to a Christmas party and get a little bit tipsy?"
> 
> and 2) "Foggy has a thing for Marci, but he also has a thing for Matt. He doesn't think that'll ever work out the way he dreams but Matt and Marci think otherwise."
> 
> So I kinda combined the two and then it sprawled a bit? Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and have a great holiday!!
> 
> Some blink and you miss it ableism and some mentions of biphobia. And no explicit sex, I'm afraid!
> 
> Beta read by the wonderful Pogopop and Dawittiest - thank you both!

 

Last party of the year, and Marci felt like she was at the epicentre. It was being hosted at some senior’s house - well, his daddy’s spare New York apartment - so the music was blaring loud, and the city glittered around them like a million candles just out of reach. It was packed, warm and heaving and very, very drunk. There was tinsel all over the walls, a Christmas tree in the corner, and, well-- between exams and half a million papers she’d had to write this past few weeks, she hadn’t exactly been feeling festive, but maybe she could get into it.

She was here with Lola (as an aside, Lola was from New York, and it privately amused Marci no end that someone with a name that reminded her of 1920's Broadway flappers was actually born and bred on the island) and the two of them made a stunning pair, dressed up in tight dresses and perfect red-and-green makeup that they had done for each other. Lola was all teeth when she was drunk, constantly smiling and laughing, coming onto the boys, uncaring to if they reciprocated. Honestly, she was a delight to just sit and observe, a maestro of leading the frat jocks on and leaving them wanting.

Marci was done with the frat boys, of which Columbia didn’t have too many, but they were like the boys who used to hang out at house parties when she still lived with her parents, so she’d somewhat inevitably drifted toward them because they were easy, and she was too. But they were boring and they talked about sports or video games or all sorts of completely inconsequential things. She wasn’t exactly going to stop midway through sex to ask how Star Athlete of the Week felt about the economic state of the country, but a girl liked a little foreplay.

Enter Foggy Nelson, who’d not only read _Freakonomics_ but all sorts of books about the world, and was also really fucking stellar at eating her out.

He had Murdock on his arm, of course he did. Both of them looked-- well, dapper would be an overstatement, but they’d clearly put in some effort, even shaving. Foggy was wearing an actually nice Christmas sweater, and Murdock was wearing a bad Christmas sweater that clashed horribly with the plaid shirt he thought people didn’t know he always wore to parties. But he was a God’s honest Annie orphan and furthermore blind so people gave him a pass, which in her opinion was entirely too fair. He _had_ the money - she knew how many scholarships he’d been given - but the bastard refused to spend it despite _knowing_ he didn’t have enough clothes.

Foggy weaved through the crowd, apologising as he went. “Wow, Marci,” he said on his approach, a grin lighting up his face as he gave her a once-over. Marci really shouldn’t be pining after this boy - long haired and scraggly and nerdy with a big laugh and insecurities that had nothing to do with his muscles or his penis - but here she was, heart all a-flutter like something out of a Jane Austen novel because of Foggy fucking Nelson. “You look amazing.”

“I know,” she replied. “Murdock, you’ve met Lola before, right?”

Lola knew the situation with Foggy and Marci. Lola had one of those attitudes that made you think, well, it wouldn’t be so bad if I spilled all my romantic and sexual secrets to her, right? Because of her being _in the know_ , she went straight for Murdock. “I think I’d remember you if we _had_ met.”

Murdock’s face did this tiny twitch like his brain just got slammed by a transmission. “Matt Murdock,” he said, holding out his hand without the cane in. “You do pre-law?”

“Philosophy,” she said primly.

“At Columbia?”

“Mmhmm. I’m a freshman.”

“How’d you know Marci, then?”

“We met in a club,” Marci said. All four of them had fake IDs, though she was fairly certain Murdock only ever used his to hang out in dive bars in some of the sketchier areas of Hell’s Kitchen. Marci had gotten hers when she was sixteen, and had updated it semi-periodically to keep herself perpetually 21.

“Marci held my hair while I threw up,” Lola added. “Tequila’s got such a fine line between fun and puking, don’t you think?”

Murdock shifted slightly, his weight moving from side to side, a rakish grin on his face. Foggy shot Marci a look, which roughly translated to - _can you believe those two?_ Marci gave one back - _I really, really can._ “I’ve never tried tequila before.”

“Never tried tequila?” Lola put a hand on his arm and laughed, addressing Marci. “Honey, where did you find this one?”

“The Pre-Law Society,” Marci bemoaned. “It’s full of nerds.”

Lola hustled Murdock off to a table in the corner laden with booze and Foggy sidled up to Marci, shaking his head as his gaze trailed after the two of them. “How the hell does he do it?”

“Handsome wounded duck,” she said.

Foggy turned to her with a rueful expression. “I shouldn’t have told you about that.”

Foggy had brought beers, so he cracked one of those open, and the two of them found a corner to go be antisocial in. Occasionally, people would flutter by, but they were for the most part engrossed in their own little world. He made her laugh til she thought her makeup would run, and they got progressively drunker through the night until a handful of people started questioning the time, and everyone realised that it was time to leave for the clubs. She kinda didn’t really feel like it; she had to be up tomorrow for her internship (luckily not until after lunchtime, but still, it wasn’t ideal) and the two of them had been having a fascinating conversation. She was also aware that it was absolutely terrible that she was considering passing up going dancing for Foggy, but on the other hand, she really didn’t care. Wasn’t feminism supposed to be about being able to do whatever she wanted? Something like that, anyway.

Foggy got up and stretched theatrically, overbalancing slightly on the crescendo. She giggled, and he shot her a winsome grin back, then they both went to go find Matt. The apartment wasn’t massive, and they found him in the master bedroom with Lola in his lap.

“Oh, shit, sorry--” Foggy began, backing out and half-stepping on Marci’s toes in the process.

Lola twisted around. Some of her lipstick was smeared on Murdock’s flushed face, a red that had crept down his exposed chest. He looked wrought, his hair a little messed up, glasses missing and shirt half unbuttoned. Lola looked perfect as always.

“Are we going now?” She clambered off, and Matt made a half noise of protest. Luckily, there wasn’t any sort of a boner situation going on. Marci wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle Murdock’s embarrassment. Still, it’d never really occurred to her to see Murdock as a sexual being - he was cute and all, but a bit bumbling and, well. Now she thought about it, she wasn’t sure why she’d ever assume he wasn’t.

“Um, I mean, I’m sure Alec won’t mind if you stay here,” Foggy began. “You two stay here, chill out, have fun--”

“I want to go out,” Lola informed him, then brushed past them after scooping her heels off the ground.

“Oh my God,” Matt muttered, covering his face.

“Sorry, buddy,” Foggy said sympathetically. “Better luck next time.”

Matt began buttoning up his shirt with uncoordinated hands. His Christmas sweater was on the ground, rumpled. She realised this was probably her first time seeing him without glasses on - she’d seen his eyes before from the side, but never front-on. They rolled up into his eyelids, then flickered down to some middle distance in front of him. Foggy plonked himself on the bed next to Matt and yanked him in for a side hug. “Did you get her number at least?”

“Foggy,” Matt said slowly. “I don’t even remember her name.”

Foggy laughed delightedly, and Marci couldn’t help but snort. “Lola is her name.”

“Lola,” Matt said, wrinkling his nose. “Really? Who’s named Lola?”

“Well, she is,” Foggy pointed out. “We can’t all have good old fashioned biblical names.”

“They’re the best names,” Matt muttered. He tilted his head upwards for a moment, leaning back with his hands on the duvet. It made his shirt stretch tight over his chest, and wow, okay, Marci. Get it together. “Are we going to, uh, hit the town too?”

“I guess,” Foggy said with a shrug. He sounded nonplussed.

“I’m not sure I want to,” Marci blurted out. “I have my internship tomorrow and last time we got back at 5AM.”

Matt looked to one side. “Yeah. I don’t really feel like it, either.”

“Guess we’re staying here, then!” Foggy said, easygoing. “Also, Matt, I like the implication there that you _ever_ feel like it.”

“It’s just loud,” Matt complained. “I don’t know why they make it so loud. And I can’t hear people coming or talking.”

“You’re not supposed to talk in clubs, Matt. You’re supposed to make a fool of yourself.” Foggy stretched out on the bed luxuriously, his shirt pulling up to reveal his happy trail. Matt did the same, though he more or less collapsed backwards. “Marci, come join us!”

“On the bed,” she said sceptically.

“It’s comfortable,” Foggy said, which was a pretty compelling argument. She snapped into action and pulled off her heels, sighing in relief and clambering on next to Foggy.

It was pretty comfortable. Really comfortable, actually. “If I could take my makeup off, I could sleep here,” she sighed wistfully.

“You can sleep in makeup,” Matt said, like he knew anything about it.

“I can if I want to ruin my skin, sure.”

A moment of contemplative silence followed, while Marci stared at the ceiling and questioned her life choices. They heard the music be turned off and the doors slamming closed; she’d send a text to Alec, let him know what was happening. He wouldn’t care either way, he was drunk as fuck, and it wasn’t even _his_ house. Matt sucked in a breath and mumbled, “God damn it.”

Foggy turned his head to him. “What?”

Matt made an expressive gesture with one hand. Completely exasperated, he exclaimed, “Fucking Lola!“

Foggy burst into infectious giggles. Marci pushed onto one arm, side-on to the boys. Foggy whacked Matt on the stomach. “Hey, hey. I’ll give you a kiss to make up for it, buddy.”

“I don’t think just one will do, but I appreciate the sentiment,” Matt said, laughing.

Foggy lurched forward to give him a peck on the cheek. “Cop out,” Marci teased.

Matt shook his head dramatically. “Cop out!” he echoed, grinning.

So he gave him another peck, this time on the lips. Matt jerked forward to follow it when Foggy pulled away. There was an odd moment after, as if time was stretching on for the two of them whilst for Marci carried on at a normal speed, watching it all unfold. “You can do better than that, Foggy-bear,” she said sweetly, mostly because she was drunk as hell and Matt was getting a bit red-faced. Making boys squirm was a hobby of hers.

Foggy glanced back to her and shot her a confused look. “Yeah,” Matt said. Marci couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “You can do better than that.”

Foggy shrugged and swooped in for a proper kiss. God help them all - it was hot. She really shouldn’t enjoy seeing her boyfriend get it on with someone else, but Foggy had a furrow in his brow and he looked beautiful with his golden hair out on the blue duvet, warm-faced and getting hotter. They broke apart, breathless.

Foggy sat up, his wide eyes darting to hers. “Hah, that was-- um, sorry, Marci,” he said, voice high. He coughed and giggled. “Got a bit carried away.”

Marci sensed a crossroads. She took the path less travelled. “I liked it,” she whispered in his ear. She drew him in for a kiss and Matt suddenly appeared, his chin hovering over Foggy’s shoulder, his hand on her arm. Marci brushed a couple fingers over his jaw and, suddenly, they were kissing too. His face was stubblier then Foggy’s, pressing forward with a certain ferociousness that made her heart thump. Of course - he was probably still reeling from Lola. Marci wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about Matt’s transferable horniness, but whatever. He was fun to kiss, and knowing Foggy was watching _did_ things.

Marci broke away to straddle over Foggy’s lap, and Matt shuffled so Foggy was between his legs as he knelt. Matt didn’t seem to know what to do with himself for a moment, then he canted forward to rest his tipsy grin against Foggy’s neck, kissing wetly, fingers sliding purposefully down his front. Marci grabbed the roaming hand, and Matt’s face jerked into something concerned, perhaps worried he’d taken it the step too far. But she just pressed it over her breast - mostly because that was the sort of things boys usually liked - and turned her gaze back to Foggy. His pupils were totally blown out, breathing heavily and lips slightly apart, face flushed from the alcohol and the-- everything else.

But she wasn’t a total asshole and she knew what it was like to be unpleasantly taken aback during sex, so she muttered, “This okay, Foggy-bear?”

Foggy nodded. “Oh my God. So okay.”

They didn’t speak much after that. Matt got Foggy’s button down off, then unbuckled his belt. Foggy gave her a hand out of her dress while Matt pulled off his shirt. He was surprisingly fit, his abs just showing through when he laughed or tensed. Marci kicked her dress across the floor and suddenly realised that she was very much about to have a threesome in the bed of a guy she barely knew.

If Lola could see her now.

 

 

* * *

 

 

(Here’s how it _actually_ started - three guilty secrets held between two boys, in order of the guilt they caused:

The second secret was one they shared and it began on their first New Year’s Eve party (shit, had it really almost been a year?). It began, as a lot of things do, with alcohol and hormones, and ended with Matt’s fingers reaching to undo Foggy’s belt, leather dented on the middle hole, liquid tension suddenly snapping into urgency with the clank of the cheap metal buckle.

They didn’t talk about it after. Matt hadn’t been entirely sure Foggy even remembered until it happened again. Then again. And again.

It was usually just hands and once or twice mouths and lots of rubbing, but Matt always wondered (fantasised, really) about what it’d be like to actually have sex with Foggy. Maybe with Foggy on his back, fingers tangled in hair, legs around Matt’s waist, whimpers forced out of him; maybe Matt on his hands and knees, kisses and bites being pressed to his shoulders as he gave his best friend what he wanted. Maybe Foggy would call him all sorts of things, things that he wasn’t sure why he craved. Maybe--

Well, right. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but Matt would want to talk to Foggy before they did that, and that was the delicate balance they were walking along. They could keep on doing this, as long as they just. Didn’t. Talk. As soon as they had to bring it up, it’d be brought into a stark light, the question having to be answered that Matt at least didn’t have a response for. What does this all actually mean?

But then Foggy and Marci became official and it ended. Just. Like. That.

And they got drunk and it ended with a tipsy goodnight and Matt had never felt more confusedly disappointed in his entire goddamn life. Part of him just chalked it up to some version of blue balls, so he tried a little bit harder to get laid, and it still didn’t stop the aching in his chest. If anything, it only made it worse when he was rejected. And then the thought kept on bubbling away in the back of his mind, anxiety-inducing and heart-wrangling: what if it was just Foggy? What if he was going to feel like this forever, because he clearly couldn’t _have_ Foggy? That was the third secret - that Matt would never be completely happy for his best friend, because-- because. Because!

 _Ah, shit,_ whispered Stick in the back of his mind, sneering and disgustingly right. _You’re in love._

That was the first secret, because the thought _hurt_ like smouldering coal nestled in his ribs, and if it hurt, it was true.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

Marci woke in her own bed the next morning at ten, alarm blaring in her face obnoxiously. She let out a little whimper and pushed up, staring at her pillow. It had pastel tan smears all over it. Goddamn _makeup_. She’d been dropped off home by Foggy and Matt, and the two of them had gone stumbling back to their own room. Her phone had a text on it from Foggy saying he’d gotten home safe, and nothing since.

She arrived to her internship looking as perfect as she could muster, with the time and energy given. It was the last time she’d be in before going home for Christmas and the day dragged, fuelled by coffee and never sitting still long enough to dwell on how hung over she was. Worse were the completely unbidden intrusive flashbacks to the night before that made her squirm in her seat, glancing around furtively as if anyone could tell what she was thinking. Then it was time to trudge back, get changed, message Lola, and wait for her dad set off.

Lola showed up shortly thereafter in the common room, bearing more coffee and some bagels, because she was an angel too good for this earth. Marci was pretty sure that if she drank another coffee she’d get jitters, but whatever, it’d fade before she went to sleep. “Morning,” Lola greeted cheerfully. It was dusk.

“Heya,” Marci replied, plucking her coffee and bagel from Lola’s hands and setting them on the table. “How you feeling?”

“Rough.” She looked it - her hair was tied up in a very messy bun, her eyes tired. “You?”

“Okay,” Marci replied. “Better for coffee.”

“Cheers to that,” Lola said, knocking her blue cardboard cup against Marci’s and then taking a massive swig.

“So, what happened in town?”

Lola got a bright look in her eye and detailed an exciting story of drunken joy, woe, and everything in between. She’d managed to find a further two boys to get off with in a nightclub, and then left just as things were getting heated. “I’m a slut for kisses!” she added, then took a massive bite of her bagel. “What about you?” Marci glanced down to her hands, and Lola gasped, having somehow magically gleaned that Something Went Down. “What happened?”

“I fucked Foggy,” she began.

“That’s not exactly news, darling--”

“After he‘d been fucked by Matt.”

She stared. “He cheated on you?” Marci shook her head no. Lola dropped her bagel in pure delight. “You had a threesome?” Marci nodded. “Did you actually?”

“I did,” Marci groaned.

“Baby’s first threesome!” Lola squealed with a couple of light claps. Marci shot her a unappreciative glare. “How was it?”

“Good,” she admitted. “Matt was better than I expected.”

“He gets around,” Lola said.

“He does?”

Lola tilted her head. “Yeah. I thought you knew about Mellissa sleeping with him.”

“I thought that was a different Matt,” Marci said with a shrug. “Anyway, he definitely waxes his chest or something. He was super smooth but his legs were really hairy.”

Lola snorted. “Maybe he’s like, one of those blind Olympic swimmers. So that’s why he shaves.”

“Swimmers shave their legs too,” Marci pointed out. “Maybe he just doesn’t like the feel of it.”

“Was anything else shaved?”

“No. It was weird.”

“Well, asides from this really thrilling conversation about his body hair,” Lola said dryly, “tell me more about it!“

Marci shook her head, a flush finally creeping to her face. She didn't know how she always seemed to end up sitting over coffee detailing her sex life to Lola, but Lola was just like that. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” Lola persuaded gleefully. “Which of them was bigger?”

“Foggy,” she answered immediately.

“I _knew_ it.”

“But they were both proportional,” Marci added, to be fair to Matt. He had a nice penis, it just wasn’t as good as Foggy’s. Then again, maybe she was biased.

“And you said Matt fucked Foggy? So Matt was the... pitcher?”

Marci burst into laughter. “I think they call it being the dom.”

“No, no, darling, you’ve had your head in _50 Shades_.” Someone then took that moment to walk by - he gave the two of them a weird look. Marci gave a sarcastic smile back. “They’re called the top. How did that even happen?”

“I don’t know!” Marci said, exasperated. “I’m trying to remember and I just can’t. It was like one minute everything was more or less normal except Matt was there, and then Matt shoved his face in Foggy’s ass and that was that. Is that how gay guys communicate who’s bottoming? Ass eating?” Lola laughed and Marci’s mouth just kept running. “In the moment you're like, ‘cool, ass eating, I can watch this, this is hot.’ Then now I’m like-- I let him eat me out after. How gross is that?”

“Sounds like a great way to get a UTI,” Lola commented mildly, slurping on her coffee.

“And then Foggy was like, we need lube, and we looked through the bedside drawers and couldn’t find any. Then Matt was like, try in the wardrobe, and we found some. It was really weird, like he was a lube bloodhound or something. Also, anal has to go way slower than I thought. Like, wow.”

“Oh yeah,” Lola said knowingly. “It’s a real pain in the ass.”

“You’re funny,” Marci deadpanned.

“Then what?”

Marci shrugged. “I watched until Matt finished and then had sex with Foggy.”

“Wasn’t it awkward to watch?”

“Not really. I helped out a bit. They put on a show.”

Lola polished off the last of her bagel and nodded. “I’d watch Matt have sex.”

Marci groaned. “Not this again.”

“I’m just saying, Foggy is so not in your league—“

“Stop being so shallow, it makes you sound like a bitch,” Marci said. Lola laughed. “I’m tired of dumb boys whose idea of fun is watching grown men kick a ball around a field. I’m looking for a guy who can mansplain something to me that I _actually_ don’t know.”

Lola snorted, but didn’t look convinced. “Matt’s hotter, though.”

“Matt has issues.”

“How do you even know that? You barely speak to him.”

“He has a vibe like he’s traumatised and hasn’t realised it yet,” Marci argued. “Before I met Matt, Foggy once told me that his roommate had food under his bed, but not like, cookies. Tins of soup and saltines. What the fuck is that all about? I’m here to have fun, not play therapist.”

“But damaged boys are the most fun,” Lola said wistfully. “They’re all so sad and desperate to please.”

“You’re a psychopath,” Marci informed her. “You actually have no self preservation, and one day, one of your damaged boys will be your downfall.”

Lola shot her a grin. She knew, and she didn't care. Marci still didn't fully get her, but she knew for sure Lola had a hungering for the drama of heartbreak. Lola was just one of those people. “Do you think Matt’s, like, DTF then?”

“You could’ve fucked him last night.”

“What sort of a girl do you think I am?” She waited for Marci’s laugh, then gave her a sharp look over her coffee. “So Foggy and Matt are roommates.”

“Yup.”

“And they just had sex.”

“Yup.”

“They didn’t both have sex with you, they had sex with each other and then you.” Marci nodded. “Hmm,” Lola said. “Good luck with that.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Marci was collected by her dad. She dumped her bags in the trunk and got into the passenger side. Her dad was among the league of bastard fathers and was trying very hard not to be. Recently, he’d cleaned up his act and actually tried his hand at real parenting, about fifteen years too late. Marci hadn’t yet figured out how she felt about it.

“Hey, honey,” he greeted warmly. God, he was desperate. “How was your weekend? Your mom said you were at a party.”

She shrugged nonchalantly, while internally she laughed her fucking head off. “Oh. It was fine.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It took another few hours for Foggy to finally text her.

 **FOGGY** Help me

Marci glanced up from her phone to her parents, who were engrossed in the TV and a magazine respectively. They’d put up a shit tonne of Christmas decorations too, though both of them were more or less atheist. It was only as she got older she wondered vaguely why they bothered with it at all.

 **MARCI** I’m back in NJ xx

 **MARCI** What’s up? xx

 **FOGGY** Matt’s being awkward 

 **MARCI** When isn’t he? xx

 **FOGGY** He’s never awkward with me

Marci had a reply half typed out when Foggy sent her another text.

 **FOGGY** Can you call? I need to tell you something xx

Marci sighed and uncurled from the armchair. “I just need to phone a friend,” she said. Her mother barely looked up from the TV; her dad shot her a concerned look.

“Everything okay?”

Ugh. Piss off. “Fine,” she replied tersely, then excused herself from the living room to go sit in the furthest part of the house - the spare room, which was cold and smelt of tinsel because they kept the box with the decorations here while they were out. She sat on the bed, the sheets cool under her fingers, and dialled.

Foggy picked up almost immediately. “I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” Marci said.

“Me and Matt, we’ve--” Foggy sucked in a breath. “We’ve slept together before now.”

Marci’s spine bolted upright completely of its own volition. “Did you not think to _tell me this_?”

“I didn’t think it would be an issue!”

“Foggy, you live with your ex,” Marci spat, completely furious.

“I don’t-- we’re not-- we never dated.”

“Right, you’re just weirdly-- fucking, _tangled up_ in one another in a totally normal and healthy way--”

“We were drunk, Marci, it was just a few handjobs--”

“I can’t believe this,” she muttered. “Why didn’t you just tell me about this at the start!?”

“Because girls can get weird about it!” Foggy said, so sharply it almost made her do a double take, except she didn’t, because fuck that. “They get weird when they find out I’m bi, or they think I’m going to cheat on them, which I’m _not_. I’ve had girls stop talking to me before because of this, Marci. If I found out you’d fucked Lola, I wouldn’t care, because I know I can trust you. So can you just-- trust me? I’m not going to cheat on you. The thing with Matt, it was just a convenience thing. I wouldn’t even call us friends with benefits because that’d make it out to be more than it really was. We were just playing around. Experimenting.”

Marci sighed hard, squeezing her eyes shut. “I need to think about this.”

“Okay.”

“I wish you’d told me from the start.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that I mind, it’s that you didn’t tell me.” Marci glanced around the cold spare room, feeling alone, really, and a bit betrayed and of course Foggy wasn’t perfect. Of course he wasn’t. “I’ll text you.”

“Okay. Talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, then hung up and settled her phone on her lap and almost, for a moment, thought about crying. Why, she wasn’t even _that_ sure - it wasn’t like Foggy had ever made any allusions to being some blushing virgin, but--

Still.

It hurt.

Instead, she phoned Lola and told her everything.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There was a party happening on New Year’s Eve.

Marci showed up looking, of course, absolutely stunning, and Foggy rocked up with the good grace to look sheepish. This was the first time they’d seen each other since, and they’d talked, but all Marci had really wanted to do was _see_ to him, face to face.

So Marci made them both a pair of really fucking strong vodka cokes and they went and sat outside on the steps outside the house, a tall and narrow thing shared between a half dozen students. It’d snowed and it was bitingly cold, but both of them were wrapped up warm, faces flushed from the alcohol. A couple of people were smoking out front, leaning against the wall, cans in their other red-raw hand, pretending it wasn’t as cold as it actually was. The smokers or the people _just taking a break_ or the ones taking a quiet Irish exit came and went as the two of them talked. And talked. And talked.

A few things were established.

One, that Foggy was to never sleep with Matt ever again whilst they were dating. That was cheating, even if they were of the same gender. Marci wasn’t one of _those_ dumbasses. Foggy agreed wholeheartedly.

Two, that the threesome was fine and they didn’t have to worry about it. Marci felt fine. Foggy felt fine. Therefore: they were fine.

Three, that more threesomes weren’t off the table, but maybe not _Matt._  And they had to talk about it beforehand.

After that, the conversation kind of devolved. Marci bummed a cigarette off one of the guys out front. She didn’t usually smoke, but she liked to, sometimes. Though she was an adult and had been for a couple of years now, it made her feel inexplicably more grown up, a weird pantomime of being someone she hoped she never would become. There was something-- not _glamorous_ , but somehow alluring about the thought of being a mysterious woman drifting through the night, perpetually stressed about _something_. Someone whose cherry red lipstick would smear on the filter end of a half-smoked cigarette, clutching a purse to a faux-fur coat that vibrated from the intensity of her shivers.

“Where’s Matt, anyway?”

“He’s staying at the dorms this break,” Foggy said, somehow sounding both bitter and apologetic.

“Doesn’t he usually stay at your parents’ place?”

Foggy rolled his glass between his hands. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, he did last year. I-- I think it’s because of-- this.”

“He’s being weird.”

“He’s being weird,” Foggy agreed, then took a sip of his drink and grimaced, the way he’d grimaced at all the other sips he’d taken. “He won’t talk about how he’s feeling. Can’t have a mature conversation to save his life.”

“I didn’t get the impression that he felt things, to be honest.” He’d always seemed so... nonchalant. She’d never heard him raise his voice.

Foggy smirked out at the street. “He feels things,” he said, his gaze sliding over to hers. “He feels things a _lot_. Holds onto them, too.”

Marci shivered and stubbed out the cigarette with her heel, watching the smouldering ash grind into the damp sidewalk, and glanced up to Foggy. His breath was puffing out in little white clouds, catching on the street lights for a moment before dissipating, and it occurred to Marci that she didn’t really usually see Foggy _without_ Matt at parties. They were a package deal; friends with one, friends with both. “I’m going inside. It’s almost midnight.”

“Yeah,” Foggy agreed faintly. “And it’s freezing.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Things settled into normalcy. Foggy and Marci manage to find the sweet spot they were in before all of it went down, which was to say, having a lot of sex and Foggy gently encouraging her to try some of the cutesy couple shit that she’d never really been overly fond of but was trying to open herself to. Because Foggy wanted her to, really, and she liked him a lot and wanted him to stick around.

Though they’d promised not to sleep with Matt again, they ended up at another party together, and stumbled back to their place and… yeah.

Then again. Then Foggy invited Marci over, saying Matt would be there, and it was a really thinly veiled way of saying, “Fancy a threesome tonight?”

She went over. Big surprise, they ended up in bed - that is to say, Matt and Foggy’s beds pushed together - sipping on whiskey swimming in melting ice like they were the kind of people who drank spirits neat rather than with sweet mixers. She’d kissed Foggy with a smokey-bitter mouth while Matt just leaned back with his glass resting against his self-congratulatory expression, as though all of this had been his idea in the first place. Foggy tackled the glass out of his hand, got Matt’s hands above his head and that smug look abruptly melted into something so surprised and wide-eyed that it made her smother a laugh at how perplexedly turned on he looked.

Marci could watch these boys all damn day.

Though Matt and Marci were both complete gentlemen to each other in bed, there was more than one moment where she got the impression that they were both _really_ there for Foggy, which...

She wondered if she should care more that. She’d always been fairly _laissez faire_ about relationships and boys and all of it, really.

“There’s no wrong way to want to fuck someone,” Lola said cheerfully over a smoothie. She stirred her straw around the pastel pink drink, then her sharp eyes snapped up to Marci’s, eyeshadow glittery. “Hey, do you think Matt’s still DTF?”

Marci groaned and hid her face in her hands.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Then it filtered back to her that Matt and Foggy had-- well, _Matt_ , had been pulling the sort of shit that instantly made her mind scream at her, _he’s trying to woo Foggy._

Buying him chocolates, and a scarf. Sharing jackets and sharing food. Walks by themselves, walks in the night. All quasi romantic stuff innocent in and of itself but that with the information she had was a red flag and a half.

So she tracked Matt down at the Pre-Law Society and quietly asked that he speak with her.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Marci demanded, the instant they were out of earshot.

“I-- um,” Matt said, flinching a little with his hands wringing around his cane. “I was doing my Jurisprudence paper, but--”

“Not that, idiot,” Marci cut in. “With _Foggy_.”

She could only just see it behind the red of his glasses, and only because the light was hitting him in a certain way through the large bay windows in this old building, but his eyes widened. “Nothing.”

“Clearly,” she said slowly, “you are. You bought him _chocolate_. Who buys their friends chocolate?”

“Lots of people buy their friends food--”

“And the _scarf_ \--”

“I just wanted him to be warm!” Matt was looking properly flushed now, the tips of his ears a bloody red. “That-- it isn’t a crime.”

“I know you and Foggy had sex before.”

“Marci, you were _there_ \--”

“I mean before the threesomes.”

Matt rocked on his feet, his face closing into something deceptively neutral. “... So?”

“So you’ve got to think about how this is coming across,” Marci said.

“It’s coming across fine, it’s _you_ who’s making this a thing--”

“ _Coming across fine?_ ” she parroted in utter disbelief.

Matt’s hands tightened, white-knuckled. “You need to step back, Marci. This isn’t about you.”

“I’m his _girlfriend_ \--”

“Then fucking act like it!” Matt spat. His body swayed backwards from the silence that followed, like he wanted to disavow the words that’d just spilled from his mouth.

Marci leaned into it, snarling. “What the fuck does _that_ mean?”

“Foggy likes all the romantic shit, he likes all of that-- all you do is have sex with him!” Matt rushed to explain. “There’s nothing wrong with that, y’know, but I-- he--” He stumbled, took a breath, and continued speaking complete nonsense. “It’s-- complicated, and I just-- there’s--”

“Matt,” Marci said carefully, “What the fuck do you want?”

“Him.” A long pause. “But you-- you give him something I can’t, so I-- don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you gone--”

“ _Something you can’t_ \-- like a vagina? Are you getting worked up because I have a--”

“Marci, no, you are--” He sucked in a breath. “You are a really fantastic young woman. You’re so intelligent and you’re one of those people who’s going to succeed. I appreciate the hell out of you.”

“... Okay?” Not that she didn’t like compliments, but she hadn’t come here for that.

“And when I say I want Foggy, I don’t mean I want him to myself.”

It knocked the air out of Marci’s lungs. She wasn’t sure what her face was doing right now; not that it would really matter, she reminded herself, so she put that energy into making her voice steady. “You want to share.”

“I couldn’t stand to be his everything, Marci. I don’t _want_ that. I want him to be happy.”

“And what about Foggy? What does Foggy want?”

His jaw clenched and he shrugged, failing to look as cool and collected as he probably wanted to. “I don’t know. This is your relationship. You want me to back off, I’ll back off.”

Matt shoved past her, and Marci wondered what the fuck she was supposed to do with _that._ She realised, suddenly, that it didn’t actually bother her, really. Then, blooming dangerous in her chest, was a really, really simple idea. It didn’t _have_ to bother her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Foggy was up and rummaging in the space at the bottom of his wardrobe where he kept his booze the moment it left her lips. She wondered for a moment if they had a problem with alcohol, but whatever, she was a student, and alcoholism could wait for when she was a highflying partner in a prestigious Manhattan law firm.

He presented the whiskey to her with his eyebrows wiggling. “Eh?” he offered playfully. She wasn’t in the mood for games, and told him as much. His smile slid and he dropped the bottle to his side. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Your gut feeling,” she pressed, leaning forward.

“My gut feeling…” Foggy muttered, fidgeting with the bottle. He brushed his hair out of his eyes, but then let it fall again, because he couldn’t meet her gaze. “I don’t mind.” Finally, he looked up. “Should I mind? It really feels like I should mind--”

“I don’t mind, either,” she admitted.

“I want both of you,” he blurted out, then slapped his forehead with his palm. “Fuck me! I’m a walking bi stereotype. I should just stop eating meat now and-- I don’t know, invest in some hair dye. D’you think I could rock electric blue?”

“No,” Marci said honestly. “Also, I’ll leave you if you dye your hair blue.”

“Okay. Fair enough.” He slumped down miserably on the opposite bed; Matt’s bed. It was tidy, hospital corners and all, and she knew that Foggy hadn’t done that when she said she was coming over, because his idea of making a bed was to throw the pillows in the general direction of the headboard and smooth out the duvet a little. “I know you said you didn’t mind, but I still feel-- shitty. Like I’m cheating. I _can’t_ have you both. It isn’t fair.”

“Have you slept with Matt since we started dating?”

“No!”

“Then you haven’t cheated, Foggy. Honestly, don’t you want to be a lawyer?” Marci waved a hand. “We’ll rewrite the contract.”

“The contract,” Foggy repeated, a little grin on his face. He was teasing her. She didn’t mind.

“You know what I mean,” she said, then had a moment of realisation. “I think we’ve been looking at this wrong.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve been looking at it like we’re conventional people,” Marci said simply. “And we’re not.”

That grin spread wider. “Are you calling us exceptional?”

“Well, I know _I_ am…”

Foggy laughed easily, and said, “Marci Stahl, you _are_ exceptional,” as he came over to pepper kisses on her face, and maybe this wouldn’t be so hard to navigate as she’d thought.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt looked absolutely stunned when they posed it to him the next week, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that this would be the natural conclusion of everything he’d come clean about.

“You mean-- all three of us? Together?”

“Yup,” Foggy said, grinning ear to ear.

“Oh,” Matt sighed, then he laughed, throwing up his hands for a moment. “Oh my God. Yeah. I want to try it.”

Foggy let out a playfully happy growl and tackle-hugged Matt, then gestured to Marci - _c’mere_ \- and pulled her down into the heap when she complied. The evening ended up in some of the slowest sex the three of them had ever had together; once they were semi-dressed again, Marci turned to Foggy, who was tying up his hair in a ponytail, tucking the shorter strands behind his ear.

“We need to figure out a new contract.”

Foggy groaned and hid his face in Matt’s bare shoulder.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“The _weirdest_ thing happened last night,” Lola began, flinging herself onto Marci’s bed dramatically.

“Oh?”

“So I tried to sleep with Matt,” she began, and Marci around in her desk chair to stare at her. Lola, for all her talk and general sex positivity, didn’t actually follow through with sleeping with guys all that often, usually joking that she was saving herself for when she was inevitably fucked by her student loans.

“ _Oh_?”

“Well, you guys are in an open relationship, right?”

“Um, yeah.” They could all sleep around if they wanted to. Marci hadn’t really gotten the chance yet, and she was pretty sure that Foggy was happy enough with the two he had. They’d only been trying this out for a month or so, after all. But so far it'd actually been working well; Matt adored all the romantic shit that Marci could only just tolerate, but his libido was lower. The end result was the pressure being taken off all three of them to fulfil  _every_ role, all the time - everyone was getting their fill of the stuff they loved.

Marci put her mascara into her makeup bag and gave Lola her full attention, which she took as permission to launch into a very dramatically regaled story.

“Well we were, like, about to get into it-- y’know, he had the condom on and everything, because safe sex, and then he was like, actually I don’t want to, so I was obviously like, oh, okay, cool.” Lola gestured with one hand - Marci made a mental note to ask where she got her nails done because they looked really fucking good - and her eyes rolled. “And then he was all, it’s not you, it’s me, which is usually bullshit, right? Or it is when I say it, anyways.”

Marci shrugged. Lola took in a breath and carried on.

“So anyways, he puts on his clothes and leaves then sends me this text.” Lola pulled out her phone and flashed it to Marci. A text, from 1 AM that morning, basically apologising with a brief bullshit explanation - something about being distracted by a paper for his Crime & Deviance Sociology class, which was absolutely a lie, because _she_ was in that Sociology class, and they’d handed in the paper he was talking about last week. “I mean, was he planning on doing schoolwork past midnight? He could’ve done that _after_. It’s weird.”

She said the last bit looking up at Marci expectantly, and she realised that Lola really was at least a little bit hurt by this. She blinked and then shrugged primly. “I don’t know what’s going on in his head,” she said, her tone soft but barely apologetic. She refused to be apologetic on behalf of boys; her dad would never say sorry even when it was _him_ who fucked up, always leaving it for her mom. Marci didn’t want to fall into the same old shit.

“But you’re dating him,” Lola pointed out, frowning and shuffling back on the bed to lean against the wall.

“We’re dating, but it’s… complicated.”

Lola’s expression shifted into something more concerned. “Are you guys alright?”

“We’re fine,” she scoffed.

Lola rested her head on top of her two hands, which were interlocked together. “So what’s complicated? Because honey, no relationship is _complicated_ if it’s _alright_.”

Goddamnit.

Marci stared down at the ground as she tried to figure out how to reply. Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t great at actually expressing her feelings. Sex was all fair game, but _emotions?_ She’d rather be six feet under than expose the fleshier parts of her brain. Her body belonged to her, but her head was a map of her life, and she didn’t want to talk about it. “So when we initially talked, it was going to be all three of us together.”

“Uh-huh.” Lola already knew that. She’d been one of the first people Marci had told, though none of them had been especially open about the exact new dynamic of their relationship. It was too new, for starters, and they were stumbling through it in such a way that made Marci want to know for sure what they were doing before she announced to the world they were doing it.

“But, really, I think we were being optimistic,” she explained. “I’m dating Foggy. And Foggy’s dating Matt. But me and Matt…”

“You’re not vibing?”

“Well, put it like this: I probably wouldn’t go on any more than a few dates with him before throwing in the towel.” Marci bit down on her lip. “I don’t know what it is about us two, but I just… I can’t be bothered. Maybe that’s mean, but honestly? One’s enough for me. I can handle threesomes, but frankly,” she said with a laugh, “Matt needs a therapist, and I’m not here for that.”

Lola hummed, smirking a little before it slipped as she rocked her head on her fists slightly. “Do you want to close the relationship again?”

“No,” Marci said honestly.

“So why don’t you just… stop dating Matt?”

Lola was such a goddamn genius sometimes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Marci stuck a message in their group chat and they met that night at her place. She just came out with it as soon as their asses hit her bed.

“Two things,” she said. Foggy nodded, a serious look on his face. Matt mostly just seemed confused, or maybe worried, since those two expressions looked pretty similar on his face. “Firstly: Matt, you need to talk about what happened with Lola last night. Secondly, I think that Matt and I should stop dating.”

“ _What--_ ” Foggy began, immediately anxious. “What’s brought this on? Are you okay? Do you want to break up with me?”

“No, Foggy-bear, calm down,” Marci said, coming and sitting next to him, gathering his hands up in her own. “I just think that me and Matt, we don’t…”

“Go together,” Matt finished, his chin lifting towards her voice. “You’re right, Marci.”

Foggy, though, would clearly need more pacifying. “No, you guys, it’s just new, we can make this work, okay? Let’s not be rash.”

“Foggy, I’m not proposing that me and Matt literally never speak to each other again. I’m still down for the occasional booty call. I just can’t be his girlfriend. And he--” Marci said, pointing to Matt, “needs to figure his life out. What happened with Lola?”

“Wait, what happened with Lola?” Foggy asked, turning to his friend.

Matt shifted uncomfortably and drew his legs up to sit cross-legged. Obviously, he hadn’t told Foggy, even though he was _supposed_ to. “I, uh.” He hadn’t taken his glasses off, and he rubbed under where they rested on the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “You know we’ve been talking, right? And we were going to meet last night.” Foggy nodded. “Well. I couldn’t, uh-- go through with it.”

“Sex, he means,” Marci clarified.

Matt shot her a flustered expression. “That. Thanks, Marci.”

“Anytime.”

“Okay, so,” Foggy pressed, “What was wrong?”

“I just don’t think I really want to sleep with other people,” Matt blurted out. “Not when you’re not there, Foggy.” Aw. That was a sweeter reason than what she had expected. “I don’t really know. I guess I just-- I wanted to be able to, y’know?”

“Buddy,” Foggy said lowly, hand coming up to rub Matt’s back. “You don’t need to sleep with anyone you don’t want to.”

“I know that, I--” His brow creased, and his face tightened as he ducked his head. He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence, so Marci took some pity and pitched in.

“Maybe you’re not _that_ polyamorous,” Marci suggested.

Matt's head shot up. “But I’m in a polyamorous relationship.”

“Well, if we break up, then it’s only actually Foggy who’s…”

“Polyamming it up?” Foggy suggested.

“Not what I was going for, but it’ll do,” Marci said.

A beat of silence. “I think we kinda threw ourselves in,” Foggy sighed.

“We did,” Matt said through a thick chuckle. He finally slid his glasses off his nose; his eyes were a little red-rimmed.

“So maybe, Matt, you don’t need to try your hand at being the next Joseph Smith.” At Matt’s confused tilt of his head, Foggy pulled back a little. “Have you not listened to _Book of Mormon_ yet? It’s going to sweep the Tonys, buddy. Best Musical and all.”

“I’ll get round to it,” Matt said, smiling a little now.

“You need to apologise to Lola,” Marci said. “Properly. No bullshit.”

Matt pulled himself away from the little bubble he’d gotten in with Foggy. “Shit. Yeah. Was she okay?”

“Well she’s not traumatised if that’s what you mean,” Marci said dryly. “But it was still shitty to up and leave like that.”

“I’ll call her,” Matt promised. “In the meantime… what’re we doing?”

“I think that it’s me and you,” Foggy said, then grabbed Marci’s hand. His was soft, writing calluses on his thumb and index finger. “And me and Marci.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Marci swam awake and glanced up to see Matt looking intent with his eyes half-open, like he was concentrating - he was propped up against the headboard, his hand over Foggy’s hair. Foggy was on his back, faced away from her slightly, his mouth slightly agape in sleep.

“Matt,” she mumbled sleepily. “Are you okay?”

Matt tore himself away from whatever he was listening to. It wasn’t the first time she’d caught him up at odd hours, and Foggy’d mentioned it before, too, thinking that he maybe had insomnia. “Sorry. Yeah. I’m fine.” He turned to her, and she could just about see the glint of his eyes, a soft outline to his form in the dim light leaking in through the curtains. “Hey, is there a word that’s opposite to schadenfreude? Like, joy in others joy.”

“Compersion,” she replied around a yawn. Trust that Matt did absolutely no research. “That’s what poly people call it.”

“Compersion,” Matt said softly to himself, running his fingers through Foggy’s hair gently. “Yeah. That’s it.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my tumblr @sleepymoritz!


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